


To Hold The Sun

by pikestaff



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Elves, F/F, Fire, Gen, Implied Non-con if you squint, Magic, Pre-Relationship, talking about feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 23:57:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13375794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pikestaff/pseuds/pikestaff
Summary: Neria Surana is used to people being afraid of her and her magic.  So when she meets someone whoisn't, it's an awakening for both of them.





	To Hold The Sun

“Why do you do that?”

Velanna’s question caught Neria off guard. It had been a relatively quiet night in Vigil’s Keep and the Wardens were resting. It was about an hour past dinner, and most of her companions were elsewhere. Well. Mostly. Anders was cooing over his cat so loudly that she could hear him even though he was well on the other side of the room, and Oghren was passed out asleep on the floor _next_ to his bed. But Sigrun, Nathaniel, and Justice weren’t around, and that was understandable. Life as a Warden was tough, and no doubt they had their own things to do.

Velanna had been writing in the journal that she had recently acquired, her quill making scratching noises as Neria prepared herself a cup of tea. But Neria hadn’t noticed the scratching stop, and when she turned to face Velanna, she was staring at her with a perplexed expression.

“Why do I do what?” Neria asked genuinely. She was holding her mug with both hands, and it was warm and comforting, the steam bringing an herbal scent to her nose.

“Do what you do every night when you make your tea,” said Velanna. She then looked at Neria expectantly, as though that explained everything.

Neria was still utterly lost. “What?”

Velanna looked down, but she took a breath as though to regain her patience, and looked up again at Neria. “When you cast your spell to heat the water. You crouch over your mug with your whole body. As though someone is about to steal it. Why do you do that?”

“I do what?” Neria wasn’t sure if it was the other woman’s words that weren’t making sense, or if she was just tired and not following.

And now it was Velanna’s turn to be perplexed. “You didn’t notice? Well. You do it every night. And look around as though you’re a child about to steal a sweetcake. You’re not going to get in trouble for making tea. Well, at least. I didn’t think that’s how the Wardens operated. Unless there’s something you haven’t told me.”

A pit began to grow in Neria’s stomach. Right. She was doing it again. Doing something weird that the others were asking about. During the Blight, Alistair once asked her why she always jumped when she heard heavy boots on a floor. “I think you’re more scared of that than the darkspawn,” he’d joked. It had taken her a while to figure out _why_ , exactly, she did that, and afterward she made a more concerted effort to be less flighty.

 _You’re not in the Circle anymore, Neria_ , she’d remind herself.

She had to remind herself that frequently, because nightmares of templars came almost as frequently as nightmares of the Archdemon.

A few things like that had happened as they traveled across Ferelden in their quest to end the Blight. Wynne was one of the few people who understood why she did the things she did, and would offer a sympathetic smile or a kind word here and there, but she still offered no real comfort when it came down to it. “I still have dreams about being an apprentice,” she’d told Neria once. “Sometimes in the dream I even show up to class naked.”

That was _considerably_ less comforting to Neria than it was probably supposed to be.

And now, looking at Velanna, she let out a sigh. Time to explain these things again, she supposed. “I… grew up in the Circle,” she said. “I suppose I’m just used to… well. Being jumped on for casting magic.”

Velanna tilted her head. She was looking at Neria as though she had just turned into a nug. “Do the shemlen do that to you often? In the Circle.”

“Maybe,” said Neria. She wasn’t sure how to say it happened enough. She wasn’t sure how to say that the threat was always there.

“Why?”

“Well, that’s what templars are for,” said Neria. She walked over to Velanna’s desk with her mug and sat down across from her. “They’re supposed to watch out for demons. Any stray magic could draw them out. So templars always have to be on the alert.”

“So they’re treating you all like children,” Velanna snorted. “In my clan, any mage old enough to feed a family knows how to defend themselves from demons.” She looked into Neria’s eyes again. “When do your templars actually stop doing that?”

“They… don’t?” This was all starting to get very odd, and Neria had to remind herself that not everyone had grown up in the society that she had. She wondered, not for the first time, what it must be like to be Dalish. She felt as though that particular part of elvishness was hers but also _not_ hers— something she could reclaim, but also something that she should not reclaim— and she was never quite sure how to deal with that inner conflict.

But Velanna was talking again before she could think on that. “So they always treat you like children. No wonder you hate your magic.”

“I don’t hate my magic,” said Neria.

“Don’t you? Then why do you hide it? You’re like one of the shemlen’s dogs, licking a wound.”

“I don’t—” Neria looked down at her tea. Velanna just didn’t understand, she thought. And she wasn’t sure how to explain it. Maybe it would be best to just retire the subject and head to bed.

But then Velanna did something surprising. And when she spoke again, her words were soft. “Do you want to come outside with me for a moment?”

The request was an odd one, and Neria looked at her questioningly.

“To look at the stars,” said Velanna. “I want to show you something.”

That, perhaps, just made it all even more bizarre, but Neria nodded. “Alright,” she said.

The night was still and quiet as the two of them headed out the front entrance of the Keep and found a secluded spot a little ways away. They were still within the visual range of guards, if they needed them, but they could talk amongst themselves freely, and Velanna did almost instantly. “Have you ever really looked at the stars before?” she asked, as she looked up into the heavens.

“You don’t really get to go outside in the Circle,” said Neria, although she looked up as well. The night was clear, and stars dotted the dark sky.

“You don’t have windows?”

“They’re barred. And high above the ground.”

Velanna looked at her oddly, and that’s when it dawned on Neria how very strange all of this must sound to someone who hadn’t grown up the way she had. She was just so used to it being _normal_ that it hadn’t occurred to her that it might not actually be so. She felt self-conscious about it, suddenly, and decided to change the subject. “But I do know a bit about astronomy. We studied it.”

“From books?” Velanna asked.

“Yeah.” Neria nodded.

Velanna huffed. “Books are useful for history. Not so useful for the stars.” But then she pointed at the sky. “Do you see that shape made out of the stars, right there? It looks like a sun.”

Neria followed her gaze. “That’s the constellation Solium,” she said.

Velanna looked over at her. “Solium? What does that mean?”

“It’s a Tevene word,” said Neria. “I think it just means ‘sun’.”

“Well,” Velanna snorted, “I suppose shemlen can get simple shapes right, at least. Do you know what it represents?”

“…the sun?”

“It represents Elgar’nan,” Velanna said. “He is the All Father. Firstborn of the sun. He commands the most fierce elements. Fire and lightning. And when I was a child, I wanted to be just like him.”

“What do you mean?” Neria’s neck was beginning to strain from looking upward, so she turned and looked over at her.

“All I ever wanted to be,” said Velanna, “Was a mage.”

“You _wanted_ to be a mage?” the question spilled from Neria’s lips before she could stop herself from asking it, and immediately afterward she felt a sense of shame. And to think, she had just been saying that she didn’t hate her magic! Yet here she was, implying that no one in their right mind would ever desire it.

But if Velanna had any negative reaction to Neria’s outburst, she didn’t show it. She smiled, instead, and said “Do you know what made the ancient elves what they were? What made them elves, long ago? Magic. It ran through their very veins, and I wanted to know that it ran through mine, too. Every day for years I would go outside and spend time with the wind, the rain, and the trees, hoping that I could share that power that they have to shape the natural world. Wanting to be like Elger’nan. And I’ll never forget when it finally happened. It was nine years old and I willed a flame into existence in my hand. I had done that, by myself. Just like the ancient elves before me and Elger’nan the All Father before them. I felt real. I felt blessed. I finally felt like I belonged somewhere. My peers might have found me to be a strange child, but in magic, I found who I truly was. In magic, I had a tie to the ancient elves. That day that I became a mage was the proudest day of my life.” She had been looking up in the sky in wonderment as she recounted this story, but now she looked over at Neria. “The shemlen and their Chantry took that from you, didn’t they?”

Neria had never really thought about it like that, and the question wasn’t one she was actually prepared to answer. She was trying to come up with something to say when Velanna noticed her troubled expression and sat down on the grass, motioning for her to follow. Neria sat with her, and then admitted “I’m not sure. I haven’t thought about it.”

“Tell me how you found out you were a mage, then,” said Velanna gently. “If you are alright with that.”

That was a story that Neria had been trying to shove out of her mind for years. She had never told anyone, and if anyone else had asked, she probably would have turned them down. But for some reason, she found herself wanting to talk about it now, and since the only one around was Velanna…

“It was fire,” said Neria. She plucked a piece of grass from the ground to fidget with it. “Like yours.”

“How old were you?” Velanna asked.

“Six or seven, about,” said Neria. “I lived in the Denerim alienage.”

“Alienage?” Velanna looked over at her.

Neria nodded. She was looking down at the ground. “That’s where the elves live, in human cities.”

Velanna wrinkled her nose but said nothing.

So Neria continued. “I was helping my mother cook, and she told me to start a fire. Using a tinderbox. It wasn’t the first time she’d had me help her with that, and it shouldn’t have been anything different, but… for some reason the fire wasn’t really starting. My mother started calling at me to hurry up and I was getting frustrated, and… then the fire just came into being. But not from the flint and tinder. No, it was my frustration that did it.

“And that scared me, a bit, and then came the… voices, in my mind, and that scared me more, and the fire got larger and larger and my mother ran over and was trying to put it out and I was terrified and I ran…”

Neria paused for a moment and shut her eyes. Relaying this story hurt a lot. She could see and hear it all vividly in her mind: the fire as it spiraled out of control and consumed the house that her parents had worked so hard for; her mother’s screams; her own desperate scrambling to the other end of the alienage where she hid behind a rotten barrel and sobbed out of fear and shame. Finally, she said “Once the fire was out the templars came and took me away. I was crying and they told me to shut up. They called me a knife-ear and a robe. ‘Twice cursed’, they said. My mother didn’t try to stop them even though I begged her to.”

She didn’t know how much more of her story she could stand to tell. She ripped another clump of grass out of the ground and tore it apart with her hands, piece by piece.

Velanna finally asked her, “You weren’t expecting those voices in your mind?”

Neria shook her head. She was still looking at the ground. “I know now that they were demons.”

“Every Dalish child knows that hearing those voices is a normal thing. A frightening thing, at first, but ultimately a joyous thing. If you had known that, you wouldn’t have been so scared. But your shemlen Chantry thinks it’s a bad thing. They tell everyone that it’s bad. And then everyone tells their children that, and then you end up with… cases like yours.” Velanna’s voice was as compassionate as she could make it as she continued softly, “I’m sorry to hear your story. It should not have happened that way. But I understand now why you don’t like your magic. It’s always been a bad thing to you.”

Tears pricked the corner of Neria’s eyes and she shut them, embarrassed.

“If it helps,” said Velanna, “I grew up feeling unlike everyone else, too. For a different reason, though. The other Dalish children thought I was strange. I never understood their… rules of play. I tried, but it all felt very arbitrary and illogical. And I told them so, and they would get upset about it. They all hated playing with me. I think they only ever put up with me because they liked my sister.”

“Did that bother you?” Neria asked. She was glad to change the subject.

“A little,” said Velanna. “But once I became a mage I knew that I was destined for greater things.”

Neria smiled at her. “I wish I loved magic the way you do. I try to, and people tell me it is a gift, but—”

“ _Shemlen_ tell you it is a gift,” said Velanna. There was disgust in her words. “People who _aren’t mages_ tell you it is a gift. They also tell you it is a curse. They tell you whatever words they want to best fit you into their world. If they want to use you, they tell you it’s a gift. If they want to lock you away, they tell you it’s a curse. They are not you. They don’t get to decide what magic is or is not. Only you get to decide that.”

Neria looked down again. This all made… a surprising amount of sense for something that she had never really thought about before. “You’re right,” she said. The clump of grass in her hands was still coming apart, but she tossed it aside. “You’re right. I shouldn’t be listening to them.”

“No, you should not,” said Velanna. “But it’s difficult to stop listening, when the entire world has told you not to speak for yourself.”

“What should I do?” asked Neria genuinely.

“Start from the beginning,” said Velanna. “The beginning that you deserved to have.” She summoned a tiny little flame in her hand and held it out. “It’s pretty. It’s like a little sun, only in your hand and not in the sky.”

Neria held out her own hand and followed suit, casting her own quick fire spell. Then she looked at the little dancing flame in her palm. “It _is_ pretty,” she said. She wasn’t quite sure if she believed the words yet, but… she thought that saying it aloud was a start.

“It will take time, I think,” said Velanna. She was still holding the flame in her hand and it illuminated her features. “For you to get used to what you are. But that’s all inside you. Just like it’s inside me. Magic is the heritage of all elves. You just need to discover it.” She smiled, and that was special, because she rarely ever smiled. It was warm and comforting, and Neria suddenly felt like she had to look away. So she did, looking back at the fire she was holding and trying to think about it as something pretty and good.

Then they sat in silence for a few minutes, each of them holding a flame in their hand, and then Velanna extinguished hers and Neria followed suit. “We’ll do this again tomorrow night,” said Velanna. But then she was paused for a moment before continuing, “…if you would enjoy my company.”

“I think I would,” said Neria.

They went back inside. Velanna went back to writing at her desk, and Neria made herself another cup of tea. And she had to stop herself from hunching over it as she heated the water, but she _did_ stop herself, and Velanna smiled at her from across the room.

This wouldn’t be easy, Neria knew. But at least she wouldn’t be alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: The Velanna backstory is taken straight from World of Thedas 2!
> 
> I am at tumblr: http://pikestaff.tumblr.com


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